Dismemberment, Site I

2003–2009

“I have now made a number of ‘Dismemberment’ works of which ‘Site I’ is the most signifi cant. ‘Dismemberment’ refers to a taking apart of a body. In much sculpture in the landscape body and land are seen as synonymous with each other. Dismemberment ritualises this connection. The aborigines of Australia have an understanding that the land is connected in this way with a ritual origin. For me this then means that the sculpture is some how essentially connected with this place. It is therefore no longer ‘just’ an object in the landscape. In this work there are a number of dismemberments. There is the dismemberment of the site. There is the dismemberment between the object and the site. Even if this is the way in which the sculpture cannot be fully perceived from any one vantage point. The verticality of sculpture is turned into the horizontality of landscape quite literally in this work giving another disjunction or dismemberment. This can be seen as an internal fracture in the sculpture.” PVC and steel, 25 metres x 84 metres (west end: 25 x 8 m, east end: 8 x 25m). The Farm, Kaipara Bay, New Zealand.